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New PC gaming rig - E6850 vs Q6600

G

Gary Whitta

Member
Okay let's test out GAF's PC tech skillz:

I'm building a new PC for gaming. At the heart of it will be a 8800GTX 768mb GPU and for the CPU I have a choice between either the Q6600 (Quad Core, 2.4ghz) or the E6850 (Dual Core, 3.0ghz).

So far from what I've heard it appears that the E6850 is the better choice due to the faster base clock speed as not that many games are using multiple cores - although this may change in the future, who knows how much and how soon?

Others, however, are of the opinion that the Q6600 is the smarter choice as I'm unlikely to notice much difference in high-end gaming performance anyway (GPU being the bigger factor) and the quad core design is more futureproofed against the next couple of years as more and more games are optimized for multiple cores.

I'm really on the fence here. Is there really going to be a big difference either way? Which one should I opt for?
 
It's worth noting that the biggest difference in gaming performance varies from game to game, STALKER's GPU-limited, whereas SupCom is CPU-limited, etc. etc.


THAT said, It really depends on how long you go between upgrades. A Quad core and a good overclock should probably net you similar performance to the stock E6850, and if you're going for longevity, as games begin to benefit from quad core more, you'll be there already.

However, if you plan on upgrading your CPU again relatively soon (like a year-year and a half), just go for the E6850.
 
Overclocking or no? That'll change some responses.


Personally I'd get a q6600 and run it at 3.0ghz+. Core 2s OC so well that it makes little sense to buy the expensive higher clocked parts.
 
Yeah but when you start to OC don't you get into a whole world of aftermarket heatsinks, thermal paste, etc? I admit all that scares me a little bit.
 
"Yeah but when you start to OC don't you get into a whole world of aftermarket heatsinks, thermal paste, etc? I admit all that scares me a little bit."


Like evil said, that Core 2s overclock well, even before getting into aftermarket heatsinks and whatnot. Stock air cooling.
 
I'd get the quad core. It's good enough with that GPU to run everything that's out right now and as time goes by more and more games will use the multiple cores.
 
Teknopathetic said:
Like evil said, that Core 2s overclock well, even before getting into aftermarket heatsinks and whatnot. Stock air cooling.
Click to expand...
You won't get much out of Q6600 using the stock cooler that Intel provides with the chip. If you're going to be overclocking, then I would really say buying another cooler is a requirement.
 
When you say stock air cooling, you mean the fan that's bolted onto the CPU as standard?

I've never overclocked before... how easy is it to do? Is it just a case of fiddling with some software settings?
 
o.O semi unrelated question, are AMD good processors? Ive notice alot of these PC GAF threads center around intel processors, just wondering if there was something wrong with AMD.
 
Gary Whitta said:
When you say stock air cooling, you mean the fan that's bolted onto the CPU as standard?

I've never overclocked before... how easy is it to do? Is it just a case of fiddling with some software settings?
Click to expand...
You can do it through software, or you can do it in the BIOS. It's not that complicated.
 
WhatRuOn said:
You can do it through software, or you can do it in the BIOS. It's not that complicated.
Click to expand...
Seems simple enough, but then there's already conflicting advice in this thread about whether or not you can successfully OC without additional cooling parts...
 
JudgeN said:
o.O semi unrelated question, are AMD good processors? Ive notice alot of these PC GAF threads center around intel processors, just wondering if there was something wrong with AMD.
Click to expand...
AMD makes good procs but as for the current selection of processors Intel beats the pants off of them in terms of power, heat, scalability, and price.

It goes back and forth between them. A few years ago you couldn't have paid me to take an Intel proc.
 
You'll get a far better deal going with the E6750 right now, considering that by the time that the difference in clock speed (ignoring overclocking possibilities) between the two will have any performance effect, we'll be well into the Quad (or even octo) core generation, and having fewer cores will be far more significant.

I'd go with the E6750 and plan on going massively multi core in 18-24 months.
 
Gary Whitta said:
When you say stock air cooling, you mean the fan that's bolted onto the CPU as standard?

I've never overclocked before... how easy is it to do? Is it just a case of fiddling with some software settings?
Click to expand...
Well it's not bolted, but when you buy retail chips from Intel they come with their own coolers........which usually are only enough to provide what the chip needs to run at stock, although you may be able to get a little more out of it if the rest of your rig is set up nicely cooling wise.

To overclock you'll be changing the FSB speed in the bios, and if you really want loads out of your chip you'll then have to move onto changing voltage settings as well.
 
Gary Whitta said:
Seems simple enough, but then there's already conflicting advice in this thread about whether or not you can successfully OC without additional cooling parts...
Click to expand...
Oh no, you can get pretty far with stock cooling. Better cooling only gets you faster speeds.
 
Gary Whitta said:
For the record, I got the Q6600 and E6850 for exactly the same price. It's just a question of which one I want to return.
Click to expand...
I'd stick with the Q6600 if ya want to future proof yourself. Games will use it eventually.
 
It's a pretty simple situation, they're both more than fast enough for anything right now, but the quad core cpu will be faster in the future. If you're only picking between those two, quad core is the right choice.
 
If you already have both, stick with the quad core. If you ever find your games needing more ooph from the CPU-not likely soon, really-THEN you can overclock. Else just run it stock.

I'd like to say that I've had success for years with modest, but significant, overclocks with stock heat sinks/fans.
 
EviLore said:
Overclocking or no? That'll change some responses.


Personally I'd get a q6600 and run it at 3.0ghz+. Core 2s OC so well that it makes little sense to buy the expensive higher clocked parts.
Click to expand...

QFT

I agree with everything posted here
 
yeah its a no brainer man.. get the Q6600, you can easily push it to 3.0ghz and the quad core will help with a game like crysis.. and games after in the "near" future.

I believe the crysis demo shown was running off 4x4 AMD cpu's.. so that right there tells yeah games soon will take advantage of quad core cpu's.
 
Mr.Potato Head said:
yeah its a no brainer man.. get the Q6600, you can easily push it to 3.0ghz and the quad core will help with a game like crysis.. and games after in the "near" future.

I believe the crysis demo shown was running off 4x4 AMD cpu's.. so that right there tells yeah games soon will take advantage of quad core cpu's.
Click to expand...
Believe it was using a plain ol' E6600 at the time. As far as future-proofing goes you can't go wrong with a Q6600. I picked up an E6850 as I plan to upgrade to Penryn whenever it comes out and the E6850 will give me top-notch performance up until that point.
 
Gary Whitta said:
One other quick question - will the 510w PSU from my old system be enough to power the new one, or will I need to upgrade?
Click to expand...
What's the brand? Check on the side how much power it can draw on it's 12v line, that's the line that's being stressed the most nowadays. If those two factors are good, then a 500+W power supply is more then enough (unless you go really extreme like sli 8800gtx or a comparable crossfire setup).
 
Good fan for a E6750. I've been looking into Zalmans 9500 fans, since they cool well and have good support brackets(the plastic clip system is terrible, so I'll rather screw my MB out to get a good support for the fan)
 
wotter said:
What's the brand? Check on the side how much power it can draw on it's 12v line, that's the line that's being stressed the most nowadays. If those two factors are good, then a 500+W power supply is more then enough (unless you go really extreme like sli 8800gtx or a comparable crossfire setup).
Click to expand...
Well I asked around and it sounds like maybe 500w is borderline low and 750w is overkill for my needs. So I picked up the Antec Truepower Trio 650w:
http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=23650
Half-price ($80) at CompUSA, and 650w should give me a nice comfort zone without being totally over-the-top. Thoughts?

BTW anyone here use an X-Fi sound card? Is it worth getting over my old Audigy?
 
Gary Whitta said:
BTW anyone here use an X-Fi sound card? Is it worth getting over my old Audigy?
Click to expand...

In games that actually take advantage of it, (like say BF2142) I get scrambled or screeching noise when alot of sounds are being played at once. It's a known issue with high end machines apparently. I am not sure if they fixed it later hardware revisions. Drivers haven't been updated in ages either. I would keep your Audigy I were you. If you do decide to get an x-fi anyway, don't get the newer low end one. It's not even a true x-fi card apparently.
 
Pimpbaa said:
In games that actually take advantage of it, (like say BF2142) I get scrambled or screeching noise when alot of sounds are being played at once. It's a known issue with high end machines apparently. I am not sure if they fixed it later hardware revisions. Drivers haven't been updated in ages either. I would keep your Audigy I were you. If you do decide to get an x-fi anyway, don't get the newer low end one. It's not even a true x-fi card apparently.
Click to expand...
I got the high-end one endorsed by Fatal1ty so it must be good, right?!?!?! It says "XTREME GAMER" on it!!?!?
 
Pimpbaa said:
In games that actually take advantage of it, (like say BF2142) I get scrambled or screeching noise when alot of sounds are being played at once. It's a known issue with high end machines apparently. I am not sure if they fixed it later hardware revisions. Drivers haven't been updated in ages either. I would keep your Audigy I were you. If you do decide to get an x-fi anyway, don't get the newer low end one. It's not even a true x-fi card apparently.
Click to expand...

they just came out with a hardware revision, so they might have fixed it if it was a hardware related error
 
I have an e6850 but ran into a mobo issue yesterday while putting it together, so I'll have to get back to you later this week when my new board gets in.
 
DopeyFish said:
they just came out with a hardware revision, so they might have fixed it if it was a hardware related error
Click to expand...

Something that could probably be fixed with bios update, but creative doesn't allow that on their cards of course.
 
I just got a new PC with an E6750 (2.66) and I ran into a mobo issue. it turned out that although it was core 2 duo compatible, it didn't suppoert the buffer of that CPU- or something to that effect. I replaced it with a better one and everything is fine now.

as for your question; I see quad cores as expensive and such new standards aren't nearly enough or widely supported to deserve their entry price. I would have waited for a few more months when newer, better performing and cheaper, versions came out. but since I got the setup I have now, I'll wait for at least another two years to begin considering an upgrade. I don't need to play every single game on max settings and only a big leap will convince me of jumping. you'd be shocked to know what my last setup was like. ;p
 
I am in the same position about which processor to get. I know nothing about overclocking. For those of you who use software to do this are there any tutorials about how to overclock the q6600? I plan on getting more cooling for my system so I should be good for overclocking right?
 
Help,Help Not to hijack this thread, but I was deleting something in Vista Premium and somehow I manged to delete the recycle bin on the desktop, how do i get it back?

Edit: I'm OK now I right clicked on the desktop and went into personlize and selected change icons.
 
I still feel like I'm torn between the Q6600 and the E6850. I'm feeling like right now it might be better to stick the 6850 for the better game performance now and upgrade to a Quad in a year or so when multiple cores are more widely supported. But then I like the better performance from the Quad in non-game operations, and from what a lot of people have said both processors are so fast that I'm unlikely to notice much if any difference in game performance right now anyway...
 
im getting a q6600 today from newegg, $294 with free shipping is just to good to pass up. I would just go all out and get the quad core, if I were you. Then you don't have to worry about upgrading. If anything I would get a cheap, really good DX9 card, then wait for the next-gen DX10 cards.
 
I went with a Quad and a Scythe Infininty( 50 bucks) and one OC up into the 3.2 region. Im preety happy with it being nice and stable.
 
Either way its a good decision. I mean they may be implementing support for quad cores soon but I can't see a dual core of that speed even if you never overclock to hurt you anytime soon. I mean the improbability of a new computer bottlenecking at the processor not being fast enough when its that high of a dual core is pretty absurd for a quite a while I would think. I bought the e6750 since it was over a hundred bucks cheaper since I bought it the day it came out. If you want to be future proofed a little long then get the quad. But remember its a low quad so eventually you might need to upgrade to a higher quad later in its life possibly if you want to game. Obviously not any time soon but still the idea. I'm more than content having my 2.66 dual core and upgrading when they release newer quads when my dual starts to show its age. Again, its all a matter of opinion so whatever you choose I hope you enjoy it.:D

O, also quick hijack how big of a power supply do u need to run the 8800 series in sli mode?
 
I picked up a 650w power supply which should be more than enough to run my 8800GTX and dual/quad core. Not sure about SLI, though. IIRC it's the GPUs that are the real power whores, not the CPUs.
 
Strictly gaming-wise I'd go with E6850. It's going to give you a 10-20% increase in gaming performance over the stock Q6600. Now you can overclock the Q6600 to the E6850 3.0Ghz but keep in the the quad cores themselves already generate a ton of heat, so you're looking at even more heat and aftermarket heatsinks. Also, no games right now even really utilize the two cores in the CPU, even the upcoming games probably won't utilize the full four cores (though they probably will utilize the two cores in a dual core pretty well). I figure we won't see real quad core threading for another year or two, so upgrade to a true quad core penryn then or octo core if it's out. Note, the current Intel quad cores aren't true quad cores in the sense that they weren't developed from the ground up but instead are really just two dual cores stuck on a single chip.

Edit: People really need to understand what the quad core chip really brings to the table before yelling GET THE QUAD CORE, IT'S GOT 4 CORES! THAT'S 2 TIMES AS MUCH AS 2 CORES SO THAT'S AWESOME.
 
I don't overclock out of paranoia. I'm ordered my first computer in a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time and it should be arriving Monday and Tuesday. (I have to hijack the UPS truck because it's getting delivered to the wrong apartment. I hate you Paypal)

Anyways, I kinda wanted to be on a budget, so pardon the graphics card.

I went from:
AMD Athlon XP 2400+
512MB Ram
Radeon 9800 Pro

to

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850
2GB Ram
EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB

I expect a lot more crap to be playable now. After suggestion I'm going to just be reinstalling XP. Waiting until SP1 for Vista.
Seriously the few titles I want to finish up are Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and GTA: San Andreas. I know those will be blazing cuz they're so old, but even my current system couldn't handle 'em.
 
Gary Whitta said:
I got the high-end one endorsed by Fatal1ty so it must be good, right?!?!?! It says "XTREME GAMER" on it!!?!?
Click to expand...
The Fatal1ty X-Fi has RAM onboard the sound card that can be specifically utilized by games if coded for. Apparently its supposed to free up more of your system resources for the game to use. I recall reading some benchmarks a while ago when the card was released but can't remember how much of a performance increase it created.
 
JCBossman said:
Help,Help Not to hijack this thread, but I was deleting something in Vista Premium and somehow I manged to delete the recycle bin on the desktop, how do i get it back?

Edit: I'm OK now I right clicked on the desktop and went into personlize and selected change icons.
Click to expand...


heh... i did that too when i got my new comp a few weeks ago :)
 
M3wThr33 said:
I don't overclock out of paranoia. I'm ordered my first computer in a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time and it should be arriving Monday and Tuesday. (I have to hijack the UPS truck because it's getting delivered to the wrong apartment. I hate you Paypal)

Anyways, I kinda wanted to be on a budget, so pardon the graphics card.

I went from:
AMD Athlon XP 2400+
512MB Ram
Radeon 9800 Pro

to

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850
2GB Ram
EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB

I expect a lot more crap to be playable now. After suggestion I'm going to just be reinstalling XP. Waiting until SP1 for Vista.
Seriously the few titles I want to finish up are Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and GTA: San Andreas. I know those will be blazing cuz they're so old, but even my current system couldn't handle 'em.
Click to expand...

please give impressions on that graphics card! they are on sale at futureshop this month and i want one. i'd reallly appreciate it!
 
I will do. It'll be on a new XP install, no less because I know this current one is more corrupted than Hong Kong marketplace.

I don't know how indepth I can get. I don't have a bleeding edge game. The closest would be the Lost Beach on Half-life 2 or Doom 3 or something.
 
KillJade said:
please give impressions on that graphics card! they are on sale at futureshop this month and i want one. i'd reallly appreciate it!
Click to expand...

If you want impressions, just check any major computer hardware review site, like www.tomshardware.com or www.anandtech.com

In general, the card is awesome, definitely worse than the GTX but definitely the best performance you can get in its price bracket.
 
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